Odd bits of news

You may be interested to know that A4e is ranked 164th in the Sunday Times top 250 league table of medium sized private companies.  Apparently the table is of companies which reported increased sales or operating profit.

Another bit of news concerns the civil servant Alan Cave, who was in charge of welfare-to-work schemes.  he has now taken a job with Serco.  Paul Flynn MP, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, condemned the move as an "egregious example of the revolving door" between government and industry.  There is nothing to stop the move, because Cave is apparently "not senior enough" to come up against the government's Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.  So that's all right, then.

You might have missed this in the Telegraph today.  "120,000 troubled families could be legally banned from spending benefits on alcohol and tobacco."  It doesn't matter how often this lie is exposed, it keeps coming back, because it's so convenient to press and government.  The 120,000 figure was plucked out of the air, a guesstimate done for completely different purposes some years ago.  It gave Emma Harrison her temporary exalted position as family tsar.  Now, local authorities identify those households which cause a lot of problems and are involved with lots of different agencies.  Some councils have been doing it for some years, and assigning a single officer as the conduit for all services and advice.  But of course the government wanted the private sector to have a profit opportunity, so private companies are now contracted to do this.  So those families, however many of them there are, will now not be able to spend their benefits as they wish. No more fags, booze or drugs.  And all spending on essentials to be done through designated supermarkets. So no more buying clothes in charity shops, or household essentials in the pound shop.  Go to Tesco or wherever, present your card at the till and proclaim to the checkout girl and everyone around you that you're a troubled family.  You can bet it won't stop there.  The far right want all benefits claimants to be paid in this way, and if it doesn't come before the next election, it will surely come after it if the Conservatives get in.